Have you ever been transfixed by the beauty of a spider web, heavy with jewels of morning dew? Or hypnotized by a multi-layered lenticular cloud, floating over Tahoma? Of course, you have! These precious moments fuel our sense of wonder for nature and give us ever more reasons to
seek out and enjoy the natural world.
If you appreciate the beauty of the natural world as I do, you will love the Science Stories exhibition now on display at Collins Memorial Library on the University of Puget Sound campus in Tacoma. In my December 2020 blog post (https://jeffantonelis-lapp.com/unexpected-opportunities/), I wrote about my involvement in the project with Tacoma book artist Mark Hoppmann. We met at the Science Stories kickoff workshop in January 2020, and Mark asked me to help him create an exhibit featuring my book, Tahoma and Its People.
Through a year of countless phone calls, emails, and even a few masked meet ups during the pandemic, Mark created A Tahoma Reliquary to honor the Native American legacy and presence at Mount Rainier that stretches back over 9,000 years.
Mark’s outstanding interpretation is reason alone to make the trip, but it’s only one piece of a remarkable display of collaborations between scientists and artists. Science Stories is the brainchild of Collins Library Director Jane Carlin, UPS professor Peter Wimberger, and Evergreen State College Emeritus Faculty Lucia Harrison. Lucia and I taught about Mount Rainier at Evergreen, and her ability to evoke artistic potential from students is second to none. And her own art, nature-based and educational at its core, is phenomenal. Lucia’s contribution to Science Stories allows visitors to create (and hand color if you want) booklets of some of the area’s native plants.
But wait—there’s so much more! One of my favorite exhibits is Connections: The Willow and the Mountain, by Evergreen stream ecologist Carri LeRoy and book artist Mari Eckstein-Gower. It focuses on the resilience of native willow at Mount St. Helens in the years following the 1980 eruption, and its far-reaching effects on the resurgence of plant and animal communities in the blast zone. Making the work even more amazing is that Eckstein-Gower conducted all of her research without a single field visit (the effects of the pandemic, once again).
Besides The Willow, other exhibits focus on the pangolin, one of the alleged carriers of the coronavirus, an opportunity to observe lichens under a microscope, an exquisite display of bark books beautifully carved and tunneled by beetles, and other displays, all making for a morning or afternoon well spent.
Visitors are invited to leave a post-it note of their impressions of Science Stories. My favorite was the Venn diagram of the intersection of Art and Science: Awesome. I couldn’t have said it any better.
The Science Stories exhibit runs until January 14, 2022, Monday thru Friday from 8 am to 5 pm. In case of Holiday closures, check https://www2.pugetsound.edu/academics/academic-resources/collins-memorial-library/ before you go. If the exhibit makes you hungry, Tacoma’s famous Red Hot is a short drive away! If making the trip doesn’t work for you, You can also visit the exhibit virtually at https://blogs.pugetsound.edu/sciencestories/.
You may have noticed a lapse of several months since my last blog post. No worries, all is well. I’ll continue to post occasionally when the opportunity presents itself. On another front, I’ve developed several new book talks and give a few a month, still mostly on Zoom. Most are available to the public, so check them out at https://jeffantonelis-lapp.com/appearances/#video and I’ll send you the link.
Thanks for reading, and in the meantime, keep your boots dry and your spirits high.
Wish I were closer to see the exhibit. Keep blogging, Jeff. We all need the perspective adjustments that comes when being out in the wild.
Thank you Jeff – wishing you the best this Holiday Season!!